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Avoid Paypal Reserves

If you use Paypal to charge your guests’ credit cards, you may have noticed some new reserves that Paypal is introducing to account holders.  Reserves amount to increased costs to you, the merchant, and result in delays in receiving your money.  Instant World Booking offers alternative and better methods for collecting from your guests that will not result in delays or higher costs in receiving your money.

Here is how Paypal recently described their reserves, which may amount to 20% of your credit card proceeds:

“Why was a reserve placed on my account?  Sometimes we need to temporarily set aside some money in your account to make sure that you can cover any potential reversals or chargebacks.

What are the different types of reserves?  Rolling reserve: A certain percentage of the money you receive each day is set aside and then released after a certain number of days.
Minimum reserve: The minimum that you need to keep in your account at all times. We’ll hold a percentage of each day’s payments until you reach your minimum reserve.”

Instant World Booking offers the industry’s low-cost solution for booking engines on a bed and breakfast or hotel website.  Compare with BedandBreakfast com and others.  There are no complicated reserves to contend with.  Instant World Booking also now offers IWB Payments, a convenient way to charge your guests by credit card for reservations and other services you offer.  For more information, check out IWB Payments.

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Payments Systems – Why Credit Card Processing can be so Expensive

Our analysts have been searching high and low on the internet for the types of credit card processing that bed and breakfasts use.  Services like Securepay or RezOvation are touted.  RezOvation does not actually provide credit card services, but facilitates links to external merchant processing solutions.  But why are these solution so expensive?  Read on below for the answer.

Instant World Booking (BedBreakfastTraveler.com) now offers IWB Payments.  This payments system is unique among all the other providers in that it requires:

  • No merchant accounts
  • No payment gateway
  • No bank or credit applications
  • No credit card processors

In short, IWB Payments handles all the complicated and otherwise costly processing for you.  All you need to do is charge your guests with convenience and confidence.  Read more about IWB Payments here:

http://www.bedbreakfasttraveler.com/payments-systems.php

As for the other services, merchant and credit application fees, discount fees, address verification fees, payment gateway fees, monthly reporting fees, setup fees, monthly service fees, pci compliance fees, etc. can add up quickly.  And yes, you will be charged most if not all of these fee categories for credit card processing.  This is not to mention the complex process of handling cardholder disputes, and a chargeback fee (about $30 or more) for every disputed transaction.

With external credit card processing used by services like Securepay, RezOvation, and others these fees are billed in bits and pieces, and it can be difficult to add them all up.  This is why you may be surprised to learn that these costs in some cases can add up to 10%-15% or more of your monthly charge volume.

Here’s just one example of how credit card processing costs can add up for a bed and breakfast or inn.  Consider a simplistic example.  Let’s say a bed and breakfast charges 10 credit cards per month.  The average discount rate or their charges is 4%.  This is not the total cost of processing, of course, but just one of the cost categories mentioned above.  Now, if just one of the 10 charges for a month is disputed by the guest, the amount charged is automatically returned to the guest by the credit card processor.  However, the discount fee is NOT returned to the bed and breakfast for disputed charges.  This means the overall discount rate for the month goes from (10 transactions x 4%) / (9 successful transactions) = 4.44%.  So, the average discount rate for the month increases from 4% to 4.44%.  That’s an 11% increase.  This of course does not include the non-refundable $30 chargeback fee that the bed and breakfast will be charged for the dispute.

IWB Payments is a simple to use credit card acceptance program that may be right for your bed and breakfast or inn if you want to avoid the administrative headaches and high costs of maintaining your own merchant processing account.

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